Friday, July 4, 2014

Cruise Day 9: Corfu.

This is our second visit to Greece, the first being a couple years ago, when we spent most of a week in Athens with a quick side trip to Milos. Hard to get a sense of a place from a short visit like these, but one hopes to build a composite picture.

Corfu is much more intimate than Athens, but reminds me of it. Like many of the other places we’ve seen on this cruise, it seems old and medieval and compact. Much of the town consists of very narrow, twisting alleyways where you can never see more than about 1/2 a block ahead, and which do not move in a consistent direction. The sun does not make its way into many of these alleys, and so it’s difficult to work your way from Point A to Point B unless you already know how to get there. You enter the tangle headed North and emerge on the West side facing Southwest. But the town is not very big, and it’s loaded with charm. The shops are very touristy, which corresponds to tourism having become many of these places’ principle means of survival. And despite a degree of crumbling antiquity, they feel like they’re doing rather well. One hopes the disruption of having a cruise ship come and go from one’s quiet little seaside village brings enough money to keep everyone happy.

We wandered the streets, buying a few trinkets and having lunch at an outdoor cafe. When we were in Athens we discovered the miraculous little treat that is the cheese croquette. We’ve never seen them anywhere else, though croquettes are on many menus in the Mediterranean. But they’re usually made from chicken, odd handball-sized fried globs of pureed chicken that are delicious but slightly… disturbing. But back in Greece we again found cheese croquettes and were thrilled. This time the croquettes were finger-shaped, like small-ish fish sticks, but still tasted pretty fab. We got those plus a great Greek salad and a Margherita pizza (which got mistranslated and came out as an uninspired four-cheese thing with a food service crust).

But if the food lacked anything, the setting more than made up for it. After a couple hours’ wandering and a visit to the Old Fort (there is a New Fort as well, the latter dating from the 1500s; not sure about the Old Fort, but it’s, well, older than that) we walked back to the ship.